Support in Assessment of Prior Learning: Personal or Online?

Assessment of Prior Learning (APL) offers significant benefits to adult learners. It reduces the gap between educational programmes and the labour market and provides learners the possibility to shorten their prospective study programmes. APL however requires adequate support of the learners that engage in APL. This study investigates which support possibilities could be useful and efficient for APL candidates in a distance education context. Staff members of an APL provider (APL tutors and educational scientists), APL candidates and a group of experts on online support evaluated and discussed the possibilities of both embedded and personal support in APL.With regard to the different phases that can be distinguished in APL, the results show that all participants expect support particularly in the phase of gathering appropriate evidence. From the staff members' perspective, embedded support is most appropriate and many types of support provisions are recommended. APL candidates prefer a combination of embedded and personal support, whereby the type of personal support can be limited to telephone and email support. The latter is preferred because of its personal, to-the-point and time independent character. An overview of the highest added value of support as well as support efficiency is provided. Unfortunately, the highest added value is not always the most efficient. Guidelines for the elaboration of efficient support with high added value in APL in the context of distance education are presented.